On The Legal Protection Of The Financial Interests Of Consumers

Consumers play an important role in the market economy. As the consumers offinancial sector-the financial consumers are growing attention and concern. The financialconsumers are usually in a vulnerable position in the financial transactions which needhigh skill and professional, and their legal rights and interests are more vulnerable to bedamaged. In order to address this problem, through many years of accumulatedexperiences and lessons of the financial crisis, the developed countries gradually formeda relatively complete legal system for the protection of the interests of the financialconsumers. But Chinese relevant laws and regulations protecting financial consumers donot sound and lack of specialized financial consumer protection agencies andmechanisms. Therefore, financial disputes in China often cannot be effectively resolvedand interests of the financial consumers are against more and more seriously.Therefore, this paper studies our financial consumer protection on legal issues. Andthe main content consists of four parts:The first part addresses the basic theory to protect the interests of the financialconsumers. Separately be elaborated from foreign legislative point of view and Chineselegislative point of view on the concept of consumer and financial consumer, and throughmaking the concepts and theoretical basis clearly, then analyzing the main performancesof the financial consumers in our country violations of consumer rights to be elaborated.These all lay the foundation for the following study.The second part introduces legal problems exist on financial consumers’ protectionin our country. It includes three sections: The first is our country’s financial consumerprotection legislation is unsound. The second is the Dispute-settling Mechanism offinancial consumer protection is not perfect. The third is the financial industry’s self-regulatory agency is not in place on financial consumer protection. Through analyzingthe protection of the interests of the financial consumers in China on a number of issuesspecifically, there is a necessity and urgency on improving legal protection for financial consumers in China.The third part is the relevant laws on the protection of the interests of the financialconsumers in foreign countries and their enlightenment to us. Related legal systems ofprotection of the interests of the financial consumers are described from the United States,the United Kingdom and the Japan separately. Based on their experiences, we could getsome useful inspirations that we can draw on.The fourth part is about the suggestions on improving the interests of the financialconsumers of our country to perfect the legal system. As pointed out the problems before,learning from foreign experience, I propose some relevant suggestions to protect thefinancial consumers in our country better. Firstly, we should make the legal system on thefinancial interests of consumers perfect gradually, mainly including amendments to theLaw on Protection of Consumer Interests, modifications to the relevant laws andregulations in the financial sector, establishing specific Financial Consumer ProtectionOrdinance, and so on. Secondly, the Dispute-settling Mechanism of financial consumerprotection should be established, such as setting the specific Finance Division andestablishment of the Financial Consumer Protection Association. Thirdly, the financialindustry’s self-regulatory mechanisms should be made perfect as soon as possible,including the self-discipline of the financial institutions and the related workers,meanwhile, strengthening the role of the Financial Industry Association.